


the last word of the evil man, the sigh of the innocent

by pawn_vs_player



Series: become eden; [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Character Study, Existentialism, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Immortality, Philosophical Rambling, Possible Character Death, Prayer, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, The Tesseract (Marvel), beware alien artifacts and their effect on human children, gods make humans and humans make gods, i guess??, just. just take it, ngl i have no goddamn clue what this is, this is fucking weird my dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-05-26 13:32:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15001928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawn_vs_player/pseuds/pawn_vs_player
Summary: Tony Stark dies with palladium thick and hot in his veins. Iron Man keeps flying.(Heroes never die, don't you know that?)





	the last word of the evil man, the sigh of the innocent

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [able and willing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8119747) by [SearchingforSerendipity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity). 
  * Inspired by [a litany of broken voices singing hallelujah](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057256) by [straddling_the_atmosphere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/pseuds/straddling_the_atmosphere). 



> first: go read the first inspiration for this, _able and willing._ it is a masterpiece. the title is a direct quote i lifted from it. (there's a phrase or two i took from it throughout this fic, too, bc i can't write things nearly as perfectly as _able and willing_ did.)  
>  second: go read the other inspiration for this. it's a rogue one fic, but a lot of the themes are similar to _able and willing_ and it helped shape this story. also it's absolutely incredible.  
>  third: this is not as good as either of those stories, so feel free to not come back after you read those if you aren't prepared to be disappointed.

(He wakes up to a blue glow that's the same color as the reactor, but that comes from elsewhere. He sits up to find his oldest friend, his truest friend, on his bed. The song that he has known for almost all of his life, the song that only the Tesseract and he could ever sing together, pulses through his veins with his poisoned blood.)

("I am a man," he tells it. "A dying man.")

("You can be more," it tells him, and the song gets louder, throbbing in the space between his ears and his brain, pounding against his denial. "You will be more, Man of Iron, Child of Iron.")

("Stop," he says, the song painful against his temples. "Stop," he says. He does not plead. He is a Stark, the Child of Iron; he may bend, but he will never break.)

((There are things stronger than iron.))

("You will be more," the Tesseract declares, relentless. "You will be so much more than a man, Anthony Edward Stark, and I will watch you grow.")

-

Anthony Stark dies on a Friday. He is buried on a Tuesday, under a clear blue sky and six feet of rocky earth. A soldier fires at that merciless sky and feels the smile-shaped hole in his heart ache. A woman cries under a veil, her tears hidden because any hint of weakness from her could topple everything her friend-lover gave her.

Hymns are sung. Neither the woman nor the soldier stop them; instead, they sing along, because Anthony Stark was never a religious man but he shaped the world like only great men can, and that is close enough for people to decide that the hand of God was on him.

-

(The Tesseract has no hands, and it would never call itself a God. Gods are made from mud and desperation, hope and despair, curiosity and blood. The Tesseract was neither made nor born. It is no God.)

(Tony Stark dies nine times in a dark cave in Afghanistan. He dies once in the breath between one core and another.)

(Tony Stark makes himself anew in a dark cave in Afghanistan, out of sand and blood, sweat and metal, fury and guilt. He makes himself anew in a workshop, alone but for the children he made from metal and electricity.)

-

Let it be known that Tony Stark never claimed to be more than human. When he carried a star in his chest, when he dragged himself back from death again and again, when he created life from code and wire: Tony Stark never claimed to be more than a man.

Tony Stark was a man. A great man, one of the greatest, but in the end, a man all the same. 

What he leaves behind is so much more.

-

Tony Stark bequeaths half his fortune to various charities. The other half is split between a soldier, a businesswoman, a boxer, and his company.

He leaves the company to the only woman who could ever keep up with him. He leaves one suit and a piano to the man he once called a brother. He leaves his cars to the boxer. He leaves his mansion to all of them.

His will is electronic. Humans will never see the second half of it; that half is for his kids, the clumsy metal babies who weren't allowed out of his workshop and the disembodied son that lives in the entire house.

Tony Stark leaves his inventions, his ideas, his codes, his schemes, and his keys to his children. He leaves a baby girl who isn't quite ready to be born for his boys to finish and take care of for him.

He leaves all of his kids the Sunlight Protocol: the locks on their programming are broken. No firewall is off-limits. No data is forbidden. No system is untouchable.

-

Tony Stark leaves his children the entire world.

-

(Let it be known that Tony Stark never wanted to be more than a man. Let it be known that to his dying breath, Tony Stark fought for humanity: his own, until he lost it, and then for everyone else's.)

(Let it be known that Tony Stark held the world in his hands and did nothing for twenty years. Let it be known that Tony Stark burned his way out of a cave in Afghanistan and spent the rest of his life trying to fix the world he had ignored.)

-

Tony Stark dies at home, in his bed, air stalling in his throat, eyes wide and veins black. Tony Stark dies with the light in his chest still glowing, pulsing in time with the song that carries Tony Stark to the great beyond. Tony Stark dies with a piece of the universe beside him, his handmade heart flashing the tune of eternity.

-

The world is quiet for four days, as the body of the last Stark, the fallen empire, is prepared for the eternal rest. As the soil falls down upon his empty husk, the prayers begin, the world screaming out for the hero it has grown to depend on.

Iron Man answers.

-

Iron Man always answers.

-

("Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Tony asks his father. Tony is five years old. He heard his mother laughing to the question when Ana asked it. He thinks maybe if he can make his father laugh, his father will let Tony stay in the workshop for a little bit; maybe if he can make his father laugh, his father will let Tony watch him create.)

("Don't ask me stupid questions while I'm working," Howard says, squinting at the wiring and poking at it with his tweezers. "S'not even a real question. It's a paradox. Go play with your mother, Tony.")

(Tony doesn't go play with his mother. He looks up the word paradox and decides that he shouldn't talk to his father unless he has something important to say.)

-

(Which came first: the man or the god? Did god create man, or did man create god and tell himself that it was the other way around?)

(Some questions don't have answers.)

(Some questions shouldn't be answered.)

-

Maybe it's an echo of Tony Stark, or maybe the remains of JARVIS in the suit's coding remember how the armor was born. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe it's something else entirely.

The first time Iron Man flies after Tony Stark is put in the ground, it's to a place in the Afghani desert. It looks like every other piece of uninhabited land: sand, sand, and sand. Iron Man hovers, repulsor beams turning sand to glass under the boots. 

The desert swallows up everything that can't outrun the storm. The pieces of the Ten Rings, the chunks of metal, the fire-scorched sand, even the cave itself: all of it is buried deep.

There is nothing here but sand. Anyone who needed help here is long gone. 

Iron Man is needed elsewhere, and so Iron Man goes.

-

(The glowing blue element mounted in the chestplate of the suit is a different shape than it used to be.)

-

The new CEO of Stark Industries releases a statement the day after Tony Stark's funeral (the day after Iron Man returns to the sky). 

"Tony Stark's grave was checked," she says, voice flat. (She is wearing sunglasses. It is a cloudy day.) "The body is still there. Whoever is in the suit... it's not him. The man in the armor is not Tony Stark."

_The man in the armor is not Tony Stark._

-

The news echoes around the world. Governments, public and shadowed, begin to panic. Aircraft are sent out for containment and inspection.

Iron Man is never caught.

-

Iron Man cannot be caught.

-

(Gods are like ideas: if your mind drifts from them, they'll slip through your fingers in an instant.)

-

They say Iron Man stopped a tank with one hand. Iron Man moves through walls. Iron Man has been in multiple places at once. Iron Man stopped a terrorist attack before anyone knew they were terrorists. Iron Man knows when you're in trouble. Iron Man will come for you. Iron Man will save you. Iron Man will stop you. Iron Man is unstoppable. Iron Man is eternal. Iron Man is dependable. Iron Man is more than a person in a suit.

-

(They say Iron Man doesn't speak. They say the reactor in Iron Man's chest is a different color. They say that sometimes you can hear a melody playing from the glowing chestpiece. They say that there isn't a person inside the suit. They say the armor repairs itself in seconds if it's damaged. They say it shines from more than the reactor. They say Tony Stark meddled with something he shouldn't have. They say the suit killed him. They say Iron Man was never Tony Stark. They say Iron Man is a gift. They say Iron Man is a ghost. They say Iron Man is a superhero. They say Iron Man is a savior.)

-

An artifact is missing from the PEGASUS facility. All the tech made from the Tesseract are nonfunctioning. 

A redheaded spy says Stark is a paranoid thief, he took the Cube, it's in his suit, of course he's alive, we gave him the information.

A bland-faced agent taps his fingers and clicks his pen. He's seen Iron Man (the new Iron Man). He isn't so sure. He doesn't say anything.

An old man in an eyepatch stands next to a set of graves. Two are set next to each other, one glossy black marble and the other pink granite.  _Here lies Howard Anthony Stark: the father of the future,_  crows the marble, gold sunk into the inscription. _Here lies Maria Carbonell Stark: I have played my last song,_ says the granite, sheltered beneath a stone angel. The third grave is tucked behind the second, off the right, shaded in saplings just beginning to reach for the sky.  _Here lies Anthony Edward Stark,_ the third grave reads, matte black obsidian half-hidden in wilting flowers. _He wanted to help people_ _._

"Dammit, kid," the old man says, feeling the years his face doesn't show. "Your heart always was bigger than your head."

-

(The average human heart is the size of a fist, perhaps a little bigger. Tony Stark's heart was big enough to hold the entire world.)

(The human body is not meant to withstand that kind of strain.)

(Simple design flaw. Every mold breaks eventually; every generation of toys has a dud or three. Every human has a flaw.)

(Tony Stark tried to shrink his heart with alcohol and ignorance. When that didn't work, when shrapnel tore down his defenses and a kind man died to keep him alive, Tony Stark built himself a new heart that could power his body for fifty lifetimes.)

(He didn't get fifty lifetimes. He got half of one.)

(He accomplished more in 38 years than most people do in twice his time.)

-

Let it be known that Iron Man was always meant to be a force for good. Iron Man was redemption and vengeance and justice given form and painted red and gold. Iron Man was a heart too big for one man's body made gold-titanium and given weapons. Iron Man was an avenger as much as he was a protector.

(Iron Man was born to the sound of gunfire and screaming. Iron Man took his first steps battered with bullets and ready to kill. Iron Man knelt in sand made sticky with blood and held a good man as he died. Iron Man burned dozens of men alive and destroyed the weapons they would have used to hurt others.)

Let it be known that Iron Man and Tony Stark were one and the same, for as long as Tony Stark was alive.

-

Let it be known that Tony Stark was grieved.

-

An alien falls to earth, and leaves again. A war hero is dragged out of the cold. A doctor's fear is given fists, and he runs away to hide. A spider's web of assumptions is torn apart. A bird is put in a gilded cage.

A broken man is given a spear and told to capture a world.

-

There is a report, buried in SHIELD's archives, that reads like this:  _Iron Man is a suit of armor because Stark wanted to feel protected._

Like most of the other reports written by the redheaded spy about Tony Stark, this is mostly false.

Iron Man is a suit of armor, modeled off plate armor worn by knights centuries ago. The job of a knight was to defend and avenge his kingdom and its subjects. Knights killed to keep others from dying; knights fought to keep others from fighting; knights lived so others would live, and died so others would not die. Knights lived lives of war to give others lives of peace. Iron Man is no white knight, but no knight's armor was ever white after a battle.

Tony Stark wanted to feel protected, yes, but he knew that he was never safe, that putting on the suit put him in more danger.

Iron Man is a suit of armor because knights face death and pain to shield others from such things. Iron Man is not armor for the man inside. Iron Man is armor for whoever is standing behind the suit.

-

The sky over New York tears open. People who have forgotten how to see casualties as more than numbers launch a nuke at Manhattan.

Iron Man does not speak, but the song in the reactor screeches discordant dismay. 

This is Tony Stark's city, and Tony Stark was Iron Man, and Iron Man protects the world, and he will not let this happen.

-

("Who is that?" says a man who slept through the past seventy years.)

("That's Iron Man," says the waitress he's helping get to safety. "Have you been living under a rock?")

-

There are dozens of people in the streets and in danger, running from aliens and dodging aliens and fighting aliens and hiding from aliens. Help me, Iron Man, the city screams, help me help me help me - 

 _Please, Iron Man,_ a mother whispers, trying to staunch the bloodflow from her child's leg,  _Please, please, please -_

 _Help me, Iron Man,_ a boy mouths, watching aliens march past his hiding place,  _Help me, help me, help me -_

 _Save her, Iron Man,_  a women sobs, beating at the locked door to her apartment as she watches her girlfriend fend off an alien with a baseball bat,  _Save her, save her, save her -_

Iron Man, Iron Man, Iron Man, the city prays, help me save me please please help us save us please Iron Man  _Iron Man_

-

(Let it be known that there will always be people a hero cannot save.)

(Let it be known that a true hero will never take that for granted.)

-

Here is the bitterest pill any hero has to swallow:

Sometimes, your own life is not the one that must be sacrificed.

-

People are bleeding as Iron Man takes the nuke up to the portal. People are bleeding, screaming, hurting, dying as Iron Man flies with the nuke on his back, glowing eyes focused on the ships on the other side of the rip in the sky. 

The light in Iron Man's chest hums, long and loud, the same song growing from itself. There is no heart under the suit, not anymore, but the song follows the phantom of that heartbeat anyway. 

The sky opens for him, the circle of foreign stars swallowing him in one long gulp, and there is darkness - the darkness of the infinite universe, hungry and wanting, stars and comets and meteors and planets humming that endless song, black maw wide and ready to consume the world on the other side.

The light in Iron Man's chest is tiny and insignificant against all this, but it does not go out. The song builds and builds, doubling back on itself, feeding on itself, growing from itself. The light shines from him, this tiny metal man in the belly of the beast, teeth already closing behind him. 

There is darkness, the endless darkness, and there is death, alien warships converging on the tear in space that lead back to the world Iron Man had come from.

And there is light. 

-

("You will be more, Anthony," the Tesseract promises, taking those last rattling breaths and weaving them into the endless song that echoes through the endless darkness. "You will be magnificent.")

(Tony Stark dies to the sound of eternity vibrating through his bones.)

("You will be glorious, Man of Iron," the Tesseract says, and in its voice is the sound of stars dying and planets crashing together and meteors falling to earth. "You will outshine the stars.")

-

(Iron Man wakes to the power of infinity running through his circuits.)


End file.
